All That You Can Leave Behind: Moralism, Doubt and De-Converted Youth

A lengthy and very thought-provoking article from Drew Dyck in Christianity Today entitled “The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church,” looking at the current wave of 20- and 30-something “de-conversions.” Dyck thankfully avoids the alarmist rhetoric that usually characterizes these articles and offers instead a fairly thorough analysis (he recently published a full-length discussion of the topic with his book Generation Ex-Christian), some of the more relevant segments of which are below. I would be interested to hear the “reasons” you’ve heard for (young) people bailing on their faith. Mockingbird is obviously very interested in this question, and I’ve tried to summarize some of our thoughts at the bottom (ht RR):

When I ask church people [why so many young people are walking away from their faith], I receive some variation of this answer: moral compromise. A teenage girl goes off to college and starts to party. A young man moves in with his girlfriend. Soon the conflict between belief and behavior becomes unbearable. Tired of dealing with a guilty conscience and unwilling to abandon their sinful lifestyles, they drop their Christian commitment. They may cite intellectual skepticism or disappointments with the church, but these are smokescreens designed to hide the reason. “They change their creed to match their deeds,” as my parents would say.

I think there’s some truth to this—more than most young leavers would care to admit. The Christian life is hard to sustain in the face of so many temptations. Over the past year, I’ve conducted in-depth interviews with scores of ex-Christians. Only two were honest enough to cite moral compromise as the primary reason for their departures. Many experienced intellectual crises that seemed to conveniently coincide with the adoption of a lifestyle that fell outside the bounds of Christian morality.

A sizable minority of leavers have adopted alternative spiritualities. A popular choice is Wicca. Morninghawk Apollo (who renamed himself as is common in Wiccan practice) discussed his rejection of Christianity with candor. “Ultimately why I left is that the Christian God demands that you submit to his will. In Wicca, it’s just the other way around. Your will is paramount. We believe in gods and goddesses, but the deities we choose to serve are based on our wills.” That Morninghawk had a Christian past was hardly unique among his friends. “It is rare to meet a new Wiccan who wasn’t raised in the church,” he told me.

In my interviews, I was struck by the diversity of the stories—one can hardly lump them together and chalk up all departures to “youthful rebellion.” Yet there were commonalities. Many de-conversions were precipitated by what happened inside rather than outside the church. Even those who adopted materialist worldviews or voguish spiritualities traced their departures back to what happened in church.

Christians often have one of two opposite and equally harmful reactions when they talk with someone who has left the faith: they go on the offensive, delivering a homespun, judgmental sermon, or they freeze in a defensive crouch and fail to engage at all.

Another unsettling pattern emerged during my interviews. Almost to a person, the leavers with whom I spoke recalled that, before leaving the faith, they were regularly shut down when they expressed doubts. Some were ridiculed in front of peers for asking “insolent questions.” Others reported receiving trite answers to vexing questions and being scolded for not accepting them. One was slapped across the face, literally.

…The answer, of course, lies in more than offering another program. Nor should we overestimate the efficacy of slicker services or edgy outreach. Only with prayer and thoughtful engagement will at least some of the current exodus be stemmed…

Ultimately we will have to undertake the slow but fruitful work of building relationships with those who have left the faith. This means viewing their skepticism for what it often is: the tortured language of spiritual longing. And once we’ve listened long and hard to their stories, and built bridges of trust, we will be ready to light the way back home.

I think this is partly true, but I might argue that we actually give “de-converts” the space (and opportunity) to build relationships with us, not the other way around, that the whole culture of conversion has already done enough damage… But that may just be a matter of semantics. Incidentally, this is also where the internet can serve a peculiarly constructive purpose: allowing disenfranchised folks to engage with the material on their own terms, and without any social cost. On our end, we simply work to expunge the superficial distinctions between Christian and non- (ergo the “us vs them” mentality) as much as humanly possible, acknowledging the many areas of our lives that are “de-converted,” dwelling instead on the common ground of human suffering and, as Dyck suggests, longing. So we don’t shy away from honest historical proclamation, but we also don’t trumpet it point-blank in insecure/defensive/heavy-handed ways either. We live our lives openly and with some degree of self-understanding, trusting that the good news will come to others as it comes to us – from the outside. As clunky as it sounds, this is where I would say “the proper distinction between the Law and the Gospel” comes in, big time. After all, what is the whole “moral compromise” phenomenon if not a fundamental confusion of the two?Cryin Shames–Please Stay

11 comments

One of the cool things about D&D religions like Wicca is that your friends, and even magazine reporters, have to call you names like Morninghawk Apollo, instead of Bert Smith.

MA's description about how he serves gods and godesses who nonetheless do his will was a bit baffling, so I looked up Wicca in Wikipedia (yes, I looked up Wicca at Wiki) and it looks like the movement has a vast number of contradictory theologies that undergird it (running from atheism to duotheism to polytheism to pantheism to monotheism). So MA may not be speaking for all Wiccans.

"De-conversion" is something that I've spent quite a good deal of time thinking about. One question I keep coming back to is a matter of first principles: what exactly is ate stake? I think different Christians have different answers to this question, and our answer to this question is one of the biggest factors in determining what our approach will be to those who have left the faith. At the same time, our personal experience in turn shapes our answer to this question. As much as Christians often hate to admit it, experience inevitably shapes theology. When we realize that a certain kind of evangelism doesn't work, we are forced to question the theological assumptions that lea to that kind of evangelism, even if we are too afraid to express our questioning out loud.

We shouldn't really assume that there really is only one "Church" to leave. That may be true in principle, but not in practice. The Church is so many things to so many people that I doubt whether it's worth pursuing a unified explanation for why people leave it.

I'd like to make one comment about "smokescreens." Moral and intellectual concerns are inseparable. Indeed, morality is an intellectual concern, and one reason why so many people leave Christianity is that its moral claims no longer make sense. Believers are often just mistaken in thinking that people "deep down" still know the claims of Christianity to be true.

In my experience, people leave the faith not merely because it puts what they feel to be unjust restrictions on their behavior, but because they find the God of the Bible to be morally reprehensible. What kind of a God would unleash his wrath on mankind? What kind of God would condemn homosexuality, or make women subordinate to men, or order whole tribes to be slaughtered in his name? What kind of God would even bother to create humankind knowing that he either had no intention or no power to prevent them from being so harmful to each other and to the world? It is not uncommon for people to say that even if the God of the Bible does exist, he's still not worth worshiping.

It should be mentioned that none of these moral concerns are new. They're just a lot more popular these days. Some attempt has been made to deal with them, but overall progress has been slow.

I think that as the article posits, the moral factor probably does indeed play in more than some would like to admit. Having said that, we in the church need to be very careful about how quickly we run to that-it's far too easy an out for us.

So often the reasons I hear people give for not believing have little to do with objections to the Biblical Gospel, and more to do with objections to what they think the Gospel is. These misconceptions are largely not their fault, either. To hear many of the loudest voices in Christianity speaking of late, you'd be hard pressed to believe we are centered on the person of Jesus, or His work for us on the Cross. We are much more associated with right-wing politics and white middle class values than God becoming flesh and giving Himself for us.

Some of that may be the media's portrayal, but alot of that is us, and the way of reconciliation with "the leavers" is going to involve much repentance around that issue.

This is a great thread, guys. While reading about "de-conversion," the word "de-version" kept popping into my head… which then became "diversion." I think it's apropos. My experience with people in my generation (I'm the grande dame here, in her mid-40s) is that people didn't "leave" the church (it was no grand gesture!), so much as they just… fell away. Got diverted. Stopped caring. Found other, more interesting things to do… other paths to follow. Christianity just ceased to be compelling to them. Like Jameson suggests, some of them aren't quite sure they believe in "that" version of God anymore. Still others have a casual belief, but don't think about it much, and it's certainly not central to their lives. Among my friends, there are atheists, agnostics, backslid Christians, Buddhists… it runs the gamut. I find that some of the people most excited about and devoted to spirituality have chosen to go the Eastern route. In many cases, it was yoga that got them started… )

I guess what I'm trying to say is that: a) I agree with Jameson that there are WAY too many "churches" for there to be just one reason, and b) In many cases, it's not so much a "leaving" as just a… not going anymore.

I also think Jameson is touching on something very important when he asks: "What, exactly, is at stake?" then tells us that different Christians have different answers. And how! I read Mockingbird every day, and I don't even know how you guys would answer that question.

The fact that "deconversion" is a fairly wide-spread phenomenon among younger Christians, and that they are open and free to express their disaffection, is an ironic testimony to the radically liberal ideas of even the most fundamentalist forms of Christianity. Can you imagine such a study being conducted in Iran?

First of all, it is interesting that the "spirituality" that people leave Christianity for is almost always more vague and less historically viable, but just as legalistic and controlling as the caricature of the Christian God they've rejected. (That this is what is often being communicated is something we're working hard to correct!) Morninghawk Apollo is going to have a hard time finding mercy and the "justification of the ungodly" from the "Horned God." Similarly, the concepts of karma/yin-yang/ etc. . are manifestations of the law rather than the Gospel–it has always been easier to believe in yourself than in a God who "works all in all."

Additionally. . .

I think that we're witnessing the (socially) painful reality that Europe has already gone through w/respect to the relationship between culture and Christianity.

But this is nothing new, we're back in a place where the message of the Gospel itself–stripped of cultural underpinnings or economic incentives–is falling on deaf ears–maybe Nietzche and his "Eternal Return" was right! But this de-coupling fits much more with the message of the Bible–it takes a miracle, literally, for someone to have faith in the Gospel—those who have ears, let them hear!

From a Christian perspective, this belief could turn into a sort of triumphalism or, worse, a belief in double predestination!:) But, hopefully, what it can do is bring a dose of humility, a reliance on prayer.

I'm always reminded of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3, when he writes, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.

When confronted with the "de-converted," there is a necessary judgment on the still-converted, and judgment brings about all sorts of negative reactions (as we know), but the Christian witness has always been strongest in the face of just this sort of rejection–think of the centurion at the foot of the cross, "Surely, this man is the son of God."—when it is peacefully, lovingly and even tearfully held with compassion and sincerity.

I think that there is a lot that the "theology of the cross" has to say about our contemporary cultural situation w/respect to apparent success and failure, as it seems like things are getting darker and darker. . . but thankfully, as we know, midnight is another day!

Read to the story of Gomer and her faithful, loving yet spurned husband searching for her (again) and then buying her back off the auction block. Poignant. "All we like sheep, prone to stray each to our own way."

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